MMM - Misfortuned Maven Maligned, Made Main Malefactor, Mayday as Misrepresented and Malicious Mocked (GudaGuda Shinsengumi The End Part 2)

With a base NP gain of 0.35%, and his BBAAQ card deck packing 3-hit Arts cards, Isami’s base Arts gain is an absolutely abysmal 1.05, coming close to challenging the worst base Arts gain in the game. Kiritsugu still holds the crown (if my memory serves correctly), but that is a record you don’t want to break.

And as you might expect, such an abysmal base NP gain has shockwaves and en-shittifies every other card’s NP gain. Despite having solid hitcounts on his other cards, they all produce absolutely sub-par NP gauge, completely crippling Isami’s ability to generate NP gauge of his regular cards.

Isami isn’t spectacular in terms of star generation, either. His 5-hit Quick card does some solid star generation with his Riding factored in, and solid hitcounts across the board means he can produce a decent amount in a Extra chain, but the general lack of Quicks at his disposal means he’s not compensating for his poor NP gain with critical stars, either.

Skill 1

First for Isami’s skills is Kotetsu BLADE. Presumably it’s in all caps because he gets very mad when people try to say it isn’t a genuine blade by the swordsmith Kotetsu. He named it “Kotetsu” regardless, so no matter how you slice it, it’s a “Kotetsu” blade in one sense, at least. Checkmate, atheists.

This skill is a straightforward offensive buff, providing an Invincible Pierce buff, and a duo of 30% Attack and Critical Damage Up for 3 turns. For an offensive boost this is pretty modest, especially on the Critical Damage front, but having anything is better than nothing. Long-lasting Invincible Pierce is a much more notable tool, assuring Isami’s most damaging attacks will strike through common defenses.

Regardless, it’s a very plain skill. Not a bad one to have, but if a Servant remains this plain on all their skills, they end up not being a particularly good one, so we’ll have to see. The 8-turn base cooldown is relatively long for the power of this skill, but all the same that cooldown is rather standard for skills in general.

Skill 2

Next in line for skills is Tennen Rishin-ryū​ (Zenith). A mouthful, but essentially a skill just saying Isami is the peak of the Shinsengumi’s proprietary sword style.

This is a dual-card booster skill, providing a modest 30% Arts and Buster Up for 3 turns, but it also doubles up as Isami’s main defensive cooldown, providing a 2-hit Evasion buff for the same duration.

Getting a boost to both of Isami’s primary card types is naturally useful, especially since the Arts boost has to compensate for one heck of a flaw. In combo with his prior Attack buff it forms a solid offensive steroid for most of his cards, but again, the overall power of this skill isn’t particularly outstanding, and the 8-turn base cooldown is more or less standard for an Evasion skill of this power.

Skill 3

Last up is Devotion. This skill, embodying one of the virtues of the Shinsengumi’s creed, is unsurprisingly a team support skill. How’s that for some thematic synergy?

This comes in the form of a combo of Charisma-like Attack buff, providing 20% Attack Up to the team for 3 turns, and a gauge charge for the whole team, varying based on whether they’re a Shinsengumi or not. Isami himself and his comrades get a 30% gauge charge, while non-Shinsengumis get a mere 10%, but get a buff that makes them Shinsengumi for 5 turns. Just long enough to not last until this skill’s next use, without external support or Append Skills.

Devotion is hardly a weak skill, with the offensive buff it packs and significant team gauge charge, but the “significant” part is dependent on a pretty mediocre trait. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly good Shinsengumi - Most Okita variants, Saito Hajime, and honestly Hijikata’s not bad with all his buffs now, but it’s not a very versatile or glorious lineup of Servants to provide a gauge charge that, frankly, other Servants like Tiamat Archer provide with no conditions. In most cases this is a 30% gauge charge for Isami himself, and 10% for the others, which is frankly a little mediocre, especially since most offensive SSR’s get a 50% gauge charge nowadays.

The Shinsengumi buff applied to the team is quite neat, especially if comboed with his fellow commander, Keisuke (who wins my personal award for most forgettable Servant in the game, since I legitimately panicked a year back when I thought I entirely passed over him for writing the MMM and nobody told me. Nope - just did not linger in my memory at all.)

The issue with that kind of team composition is when you deploy two Shinsengumi in a team of three the point of giving them the Shinsengumi trait for free is rather…redundant? At that point you might as well throw Okita or Hajime in and reap maximum benefits from the start.

This is all to say this skill isn’t the greatest either, though having more damage buffs and a reasonable amount of gauge charge is better than what some Servants get, and the 7-turn base cooldown is pretty short for a team gauge charger.

Wrapping things up, we have Isami’s NP, Makoto no Hata. It’s practically a trope at this point that any Servant that led an organization, team, army, or whatever gets to summon them for a tag-team as their NP, sometimes a Reality Marble included, and this NP thankfully only fulfils half that trope.

As an Arts AOE NP this has plenty of NP spam potential within, but let’s break down the effects first - Before dealing damage, Isami cleanses all debuffs from his Shinsengumi allies, which naturally includes himself, and provides them with a 10% Buster/Arts/Quick booster buff combo for 3 turns, scaling with Overcharge.

While that’s legitimately all there is for effects, it’s a pretty good combo, keeping the team healthy from dangerous debuffs and boosting their capabilities in a multitude of ways, and it doubles up as a ramping damage boost for Isami himself, providing better damage output and refund for his incoming NP.

There’s nothing special about Isami’s AOE damage output itself, so let’s get into the refund and general performance. The reason Isami’s base NP gain is so incredibly gimped is due to this NP - they presumably wanted it to have 8 hits in-game to match the animation of the 8 implemented Shinsengumi members attacking, so Isami’s base NP gain is severely beaten down so that it doesn’t produce obscene amounts of NP gauge. In any case, it produces a whopping 35% gauge charge against 3 targets with Isami’s own buffs active, and you don’t need me to tell you that’s some absurdly good refund.

Where Isami drags behind a little more, however, is the damage output. With his own buffs live his NP is doing about 25k damage neutral, a passable amount of damage, but not particularly great either, owing to his lack of NP Damage Up buffs to complete the NP steroid trinity. When thrown in a standard 50% NP gauge CE farming team with double Castoria backing him, he’s dealing a more respectable 75k damage neutral on his first NP, and his NP refund with full Castoria buffs live reaches 100% most of the time, so he is…very set for NP refund, almost excessively so.

Due to how absurdly good his refund is, I won’t delve on a 50% NP gauge setup any longer - you will pretty much always use him with Black Grail (or a similarly powerful no-NP gauge CE), so let’s examine him in that framework. In such a setup, he’s dishing out 111k damage neutral on wave 1, jumping to 116k on wave 2, then 150k on wave 3. For a setup with no battlesuit swaps that manages 100% refund on each NP guaranteed if Isami kills…yeah it’s very good. More than enough damage to do his class advantage farming, and he won’t have many issues doing universal farming, either, especially if you do invest in a Battlesuit Swap support to further amplify his damage.

I’m beginning to understand why his base NP gain is so low, at any rate. Any higher and he’d be risking self-sufficient infinite NP looping, which would be funny if nothing else.